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The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

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Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#481

Post by gregw2 »

jespern wrote: post #243
hedora wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On complexity vs sophistication: During the cold war, a US company noticed the USSR had stolen the plans for a natural gas pipeline system, but not the software. In response, the US introduced an integer overflow bug that was uptime dependent, and took something like 6 months to hit. The bug simultaneously cranked up the pumps and closed all the valves in the network. It was known that the Soviet economy would crash…

Do you have a source for this? I can only find reports from "At the Abyss", which are uncorroborated.

somewhat described in the book Victory, by Peter Schweizer

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#482

Post by lawnchair_larry »

hedora wrote: post #232
fapjacks wrote: post #8

I've been arguing about this for the last three days. Mostly around the reason that "complexity" is not strictly the same thing as "sophistication" when it comes to software. Noobs will conflate the two, but experienced programmers will agree that -- just to illustrate my point -- some code which solves a complex problem in a very clever way while also being very clean and easy to maintain will be considered strictly…

On complexity vs sophistication: During the cold war, a US company noticed the USSR had stolen the plans for a natural gas pipeline system, but not the software. In response, the US introduced an integer overflow bug that was uptime dependent, and took something like 6 months to hit. The bug simultaneously cranked up the pumps and closed all the valves in the network. It was known that the Soviet economy would crash…

This didn’t actually happen, but it makes a good story that is often repeated.

http://jeffreycarr.blogspot.com/2012/06/myth-of-cia-and-tran...

Also, this story seems to be taking on a life of its own. You have some details that were not in previous rounds. Integer overflow based on uptime was not in the original unverified story.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#483

Post by graeme »

forapurpose wrote: post #467
graeme wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't actually read Brodie, I'm just going on my memory from my strategic studies class. But my recollection is that he more or less fully fleshed out nuclear warfare theory in 1946. The tech wasn't there, but the logic of the weapons was. MAD is less a strategy than a reality. As long as each side has weapons that can't be credibly destroyed in a first strike, you have MAD, whether theorists explicitly call for…

Thanks. A couple things I don't think are accurate, based on my limited knowledge: > As long as each side has weapons that can't be credibly destroyed in a first strike, you have MAD With the significant qualifier that you need enough weapons to survive to completely destroy the enemy. > MAD is less a strategy than a reality I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. It was and is a specific strategy and implementing it was t…

The thing with defense is that even without the ABM treaty, we don't have an effective defense. MIRVs will always be cheaper than single shot ABMs, and their reliability is too low to rely on in the event of a second strike. That's what I meant by it being a reality.

People do of course adopt it as a strategy as well. But if effective defense tech existed I don't think the strategy would hold. The US abandoned the ABM treaty even without such technology.

As for your first point, it's true that MAD didn't really conclusively come into force until submarines. But there were efforts before then to maintain a second strike capability, such as keeping a certain percentage of bombers in the air, preparing them for fast takeoff, etc

Maybe not 100% assured second strike, but the basic idea was the same

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#484

Post by iamgopal »

vbsteven wrote: post #39

The scary thing about this is: Stuxnet is one of the "most sophisticated" pieces of malware we have discovered up until now . Who knows what kinds of software are still out there quietly doing their thing in the shadows.

I happen to realise all social media apps are kind of malware.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#485

Post by sgtmas2006 »

exikyut wrote: post #234
acutesoftware wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly wouldn't be calling lots and lots of API's, as that would likely trigger some antivirus software or at least leave traces in system logs. The sophistication of this software is that it did all this undetected.

"x86 is a high-level language": https://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/x86-is-high-level-languag... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9264195 Everything's an API at the end of the day. There was an article on here recently about the practical effects of the TLS 1.3 drafts, and how they broke proxies. I can't find it. It was talking about how the proxies choked because so many variable wire bits in TLS 1.2 stayed sta…

I would love to read this if you come across it.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#486

Post by mikejb »

gray_-_wolf wrote: post #102
mikejb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone brings up "wants to wipe out xyz", I wonder how that would play out. North Korea wants to nuke the US and SK, Iran wants to nuke Israel, Pakistan wants to nuke India, etc. But playing the scenario in your head leaves to a simple conclusion: If either NK or Iran would deploy nukes, it would be their end. It is likely that the US will remain the only nation on this planet who dropped nukes on civilia…

> who dropped nukes on civilians. While technically true, in Hiroshima were multiple military headquarters and Nagasaki were industrial city and shipyard. Just saying there there was a bit more reasoning behind the selection then "where we could kill the most civilians".

Yes, there definitely were more factors that went into that decision. But destroying factories and shipyards in populated cities wasn't the primary factor that went into the choice of weapon.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#487

Post by mikejb »

gadders wrote: post #164
mikejb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone brings up "wants to wipe out xyz", I wonder how that would play out. North Korea wants to nuke the US and SK, Iran wants to nuke Israel, Pakistan wants to nuke India, etc. But playing the scenario in your head leaves to a simple conclusion: If either NK or Iran would deploy nukes, it would be their end. It is likely that the US will remain the only nation on this planet who dropped nukes on civilia…

If you were the PM of Israel, would you stake the lives of 6m people on that? It would be Iran's end, but it would be too late for Israel if it came to that.

Every nation has to trust the country with nukes that they won't invade or destroy them. If you were Iran, would you trust the US not to try to invade or topple your country?

Iran isn't alone with the rhetoric of 'destroy your enemies'. North Korea and the US sell the same story, just the enemy changes. Whether the enemy is Israel, the US, or the arbitrary definition of a terrorist, the sell is ultimately a strategy to sustain support for military spending. It's hard to defend vast military spending when you have a poverty problem in your country - unless you can say you have enemies to defend against.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#488

Post by heavenlyblue »

csomar wrote: post #457
thaumasiotes wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people perceive complexity as things they don't understand. I don't think this is true. For example, as a math teacher, I couldn't do a very good job predicting how easy or difficult students would find particular problems. But I could easily predict which problems would be easier and which would be more difficult. I could do that even though I personally understood all the problems.

I don't think difficulty is complexity. For example, the bitcoin mining protocol complexity is the same but the difficulty goes up or down. I'll attribute difficulty to the energy required to resolve a system. For example, pulling weight. The complexity of the action is the same. But the difficulty depends on the weights to pull.

It seems you’re vastly misusing the words and their contexts here.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#489

Post by synfin80 »

One thing that was somewhat glossed over in the article is that stuxnet used 4 zero-days... That is it exploited 4 different software vulnerabilities that were unknown. This is a completely unprecedented level of sophistication in malware.

https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/stuxnet-using-three-a...

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#490

Post by erkkie »

forapurpose wrote: post #231
erkkie wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of.

> Only in a western welfare bubble. Morality over war is what you can afford having other security needs taken care of. That's actually a false hypothesis of people in the 'western bubble' who haven't experienced war. Research I've seen shows that people in places that have experienced it, such as in Syria, are much more opposed to it. And that bears out in Western experiences: Who created the UN, with the stated pur…

Do note the same countries still wage war (and trade in realpolitik). What you're saying is not mutually exclusive with what I'm saying, it's on a continuum.
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